Page 1 of Ra (The Scarab Prophecy #1)

“Dr. Clement! Dr. Clement! Come quickly!” Abasi called as he rushed toward a canvas canopy set up some forty feet in the distance.

Her concentration broken by the call from her lead excavator, Dr. Azenath Clement, known to friends as Azi, reluctantly placed the piece of broken vessel back in its place along with long rows of other artifacts already tagged and at least partially identified.

This piece was particularly intriguing as what remained of it hinted that it was once covered in a blue-green finish.

She tucked the brush she’d been using to very carefully clean the symbols barely visible on its surface, back into the small fanny-pack she wore across her hips.

“Dr. Clement!” Abasi shouted urgently as he got closer to the artifact tent.

“I’m here,” she answered, her voice muffled by the mask she wore over her mouth and nose to deter the sand that never failed to find its way into every crevice of her body.

She turned away from the long table in the middle of the tent, walking past the other two tables just like the first already filled with artifacts, and moved toward the front of the tent.

At its entrance the main flaps were tied back to allow easy access.

As she stepped outside in the merciless sun blazing down, she reached up and pulled the protective mask off her face to rest at her throat. “What is it, Abasi?”

“Dr. Clement! Come quickly!”

“Is there a problem? What’s happened?” Azi asked.

“You were right, Dr. Clement! We’ve found it!” Abasi announced, his own excitement rushing from him unbound.

She just barely shook her head, not understanding at first. Then suddenly, she understood. “Another burial,” she rushed out.

Abasi nodded enthusiastically. “Hidden under the first, just like you suspected! But it’s not just a burial. It’s the burial.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

Abasi grinned. “It’s Ra!”

“Abasi, Ra was a myth. It can’t be Ra,” she said, as she started across the scorching sands of the desert beside Abasi toward the roped off hole they’d cleared and struggled to hold the encroaching sands back from daily.

“It’s magnificent! You must see it!” he said, smiling from ear-to-ear.

“Show me,” she said, a slow smile spreading across her lips as his excitement began to infect her usually stoic countenance.

Abasi led her past a group of workers standing outside the temporary walls made of sandbags and ropes, marked with orange XS on them to make them easier to see. They all nodded respectfully as she approached.

“I called work to a stop when I realized what we’d uncovered. Then I went for you right away. I knew you’d want to be the first.” He smiled at her as she followed him through the small tomb of a well-loved and respected servant they’d been working in for months.

She and her archeology team, assisted by Abasi and his workers, had been painstakingly excavating and identifying, tagging and removing every single artifact and relic they’d found in the small tomb.

What made it remarkable was that everything they’d used to identify the owner of the tomb, and the individual buried in it, was that it had never been disturbed.

It was as it had been the day they sealed it.

And though he’d been a servant of high-regard, it was extremely unusual to have so many items buried with a servant.

She had more questions than answers, but took her time cataloging every single minute piece of history they found there.

He led her to a dark, dusty corner of the tomb they’d investigated early on and recorded as unremarkable.

It was only slightly less decorative than the rest of the walls which at least gave an indication of color that had once adorned them.

This particular corner, however, was nothing more than a wall with minimal-to-no hieroglyphs decorating it.

“What made you look here?” she asked.

“The mirrors.”

“We’ve considered them every day,” she said, implying that they looked the same as they always did, light refracting one piece of broken mirror to another.

They lit the tomb using sunlight from outside.

It was a common way for the workers to see underground.

Pieces of mirror were often left in the tombs — it was nothing new.

“Yes. This time, I dropped my trowel. I bent over to pick it up and my foot kicked it against the wall. As I leaned over, a fraction of light from the mirror above illuminated my trowel.”

“Your trowel? That is amazing, considering how dirty it always is.”

“Exactly. It made me reconsider. I examined the floor where it met the wall, and I found something.”

Azi tilted her head slightly and gestured to the wall.

“Watch,” he whispered enticingly.

She nodded as he knelt on the dusty, stone floor and smiled up at her.

Abasi, turned to the wall and dug his fingers into a small crack between the wall and the floor she’d not noticed before.

As he pressed his fingers there, the wall effortlessly swung open just a few inches.

Her mouth fell open, and once again she was amazed by the engineering of a people so far removed from the modern world.

There was no sound other than a soft whoosh, then a three foot section of stone had swung open as though it was part of a Lazy-Susan, inviting them inside to share in its secrets.

Abasi turned toward her. “Shall I open it the rest of the way?”

“You’ve done so once already, haven’t you?” Azi asked with a wry grin and one brow raised.

“Yes! But then I closed it right up!”

“You peeked inside. You already said as much.”

Abasi grinned sheepishly at her. “I had to be sure it was safe for you to enter, Dr. Clement.”

Azi laughed. “Show me,” she said, gesturing at the opening he’d found.

Abasi gripped the edge of the opening that was at the moment only a few inches wide, and pulled, revealing the stone door, only three feet by one and a half feet, that he’d found and looked up at her. “Would you like to go first?”

“Second, you mean?”

“I only went far enough down the staircase to see what we faced. Then I came right back up, I touched nothing.”

Azi knelt down beside him and stretched her upper body through the opening far enough to see into it.

The space was filled with cobwebs and thousands of years worth of dust and dirt.

The thrill that went through her body was a feeling unlike any she could have ever imagined.

She paused only long enough to smile back at him and replace the mask over her mouth and nose, then crawled on her hands and knees through the small hinged door Abasi was so proud of, in what was once believed to be a solid stone wall.

Hearing the scraping of stone-on-stone behind her, she looked back to see Abasi wedging several large pieces of rock from the original excavation into the opening, presumably to keep them from being trapped inside. “Where’d those come from?”

“I brought them down before I went to call you. We don’t want the door to close behind us.”

“Smart,” she said.

Abasi grinned at her, just before she disappeared into the opening.

Two feet from the secret door, the tight opening widened and Azi was able to stand. Looking down she noticed a carved stone staircase before her. Azi reached into the fanny pack she wore and took out a flashlight.

“You won’t need it, Dr. Clement,” Abasi said from behind her as he stood up.

She looked back at Abasi and he gestured to the mirror on the stone floor just ahead, held in place by an ornately carved falcon. It shone with sunshine from the small door they’d entered through, but its light was directed down the stairs.

“The small mirror piece that was accidentally left behind, wasn’t an accident after all,” he said.

The originally excavated burial chamber had only one uneven broken piece of mirror mounted on its wall and they'd surmised that the builders must have used others to light the interior as they worked inside, accidentally forgetting the last small piece when they removed the others.

“It was waiting to light the real chamber hidden below,” Abasi said.

Dr. Clement smiled as she set her foot on the first step down, then another, another, and another, counting as she went until she arrived on a landing with yet another mirror, this one sitting on a ram’s head balancing on its horns to catch and then reflect the sunlight down the rest of the stone staircase.

She started down the second staircase, stopping when she reached the bottom.

She stood perfectly still, her eyes wide, her heart thundering as her mind swirled with a thousand thoughts as she took in the sight before her perfectly illuminated by an exceptional display of perfectly cut square mirrors lining the seam of the walls and ceiling.

Twelve gilded columns, six on each side of the huge room seemed to support this chamber and the plainer one above it.

The ceiling was painted with scenes from the ancient stories of the sun god Ra’s daily journey through the sky to bring light to the twelve kingdoms of the world.

While the walls were painted with scenes of the underworld and the twelve regions and battles he fought to defeat the serpent god Apep.

The floor was as impressive if not even more so, painted as a sunrise, with a multitude of golden scarab beetles supporting a magnificent gilded sarcophagus in the center of the room.

Against the far wall was what appeared to be a solid gold throne, twelve one-inch-thick steps on its left side led up to its raised dais, and twelve one-inch-thick steps on its right side led back down to the floor.

On the wall behind the throne was a carved relief of a pedestal, upon which stood each of the other Egyptian gods and goddesses at just the right height to look out over the shoulder of Ra, or his priest, as they sat upon the throne of Ra.

Abasi joined her just beside the stone stairway they’d just descended and stood just behind and beside her.

“Twenty-four steps, separated into two sections of twelve. Twelve hours of the day — the way lighted by a falcon holding the mirror to bring the light. Twelve hours of night, lighted by a mirror held by the ram’s horns to deliver the light.

Twenty-four gilded columns one for each hour of the day and night.

On the ceiling is Ra’s journey through the twelve hours of the day, on the walls is his journey through the twelve hours of night as he journeys into the underworld, the floor is his rebirth as the sun rises again.

A golden sarcophagus supported by Khepri the sacred scarab beetle, and a golden throne to sit upon.

If this is not Ra, then who is it?” he asked in an awed whisper.

“A priest of Ra, perhaps,” Azi answered, her own voice lowered in respect for whomever it was that rested here.

“There are no canopic jars to hold the organs,” Abasi pointed out.

Azi’s gaze swept the tomb. “If there is a mummy, we’ll find the canopic jars.”

“One wouldn’t mummify Ra. They’d simply lay him to rest, replete as he is, and allow him to rejuvenate at will.”

Azi turned her head to glance over her shoulder at Abasi. “You’re a little too convinced this is the tomb of a god.”

“I cannot see what else it might be,” he said, lifting both his hands to shrug slightly as he smiled at her, inviting her to see the symbolic features that pointed to the obvious answers that he saw.

“It’s certainly built to mimic a temple of Ra. If there is a mummy, surely it will turn out to be one of his high-priests. Since Ra is no more than mythology of the period, I’m fairly certain this is not Ra.”

Abasi smiled knowingly at Azi. “I’m sure we’ll all see the truth in time.”

Azi nodded as she moved forward slowly, her eyes wide with wonder. Her head trying to take in everything she could as she looked everywhere at once. “This is beyond all imagining.”

“It is. Yet, you, Dr. Clement, have been chosen to discover its secrets.”

She turned her head to look at Abasi. “And you, Abasi. Without you I wouldn’t have been given the privilege of witnessing this.”

Abasi clasped his hand before him and performed a little bow to the woman he’d vowed to protect just as he’d protected her father when he was still able to explore the land and peoples Abasi called home. “I am but a tool, placed here at the right time to assist you.”

“Abasi, you are so much more. I don’t know how I’d have managed for so long without your help and your friendship.

And now… this,” she said, turning slowly in a circle as she allowed herself to drop her habitual scientific regard for all she saw and allowed herself to be the little girl who fell in love with this period, this culture, this people, through her father’s work so many years ago.

“Do you think the scarab your father gave you might be the same as these?” Abasi asked.

Azi pulled her gaze from the ceiling and focused on Abasi. “I don’t think so, it’s much smaller.”

“Is it?” Abasi asked.

Azi dug her hand into the front pocket of the khaki cargo pants that had become her unofficial uniform and pulled out a small golden scarab with a simple band attached to it to form a ring.

She ran her thumb over it and smiled down at it as she had a flash of the memory of her father gifting it to her.

“It looks the same to me,” Abasi said.

She nodded then walked over to the sarcophagus and knelt down beside it. “It’s similar, but not exact.”

“Yes, I see now. Yours has a green inlay on its wings and these do not.”

“Mine is a little smaller, too. Otherwise, it’s very similar.”

“Almost like you were supposed to find these,” Abasi said.

Azi laughed. Her laughter filled the tomb echoing through it and filling it with a life it hadn’t experienced in thousands of years. “I’m just honored to be able to say you shared it with me.”

“It was all you, Dr. Clement,” Abasi said.